


Match Cord

by misspamela



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/M, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 21:23:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8939878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misspamela/pseuds/misspamela
Summary: A girl. His future. The entirety of his poor black heart, staring at him from across the public room of the Cock and Crown, her thin arm clutched in the paw of a man three times her age.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> The match cord is a term for the type of fuse used in early artillery.
> 
> Thank you to Olivia for the quick beta!

It surprises him sometimes, how beautiful she is. That is to say, Anne has been the brightest star in his sky since they were both scrawny youths, barely out of childhood. She is everything to him, and yet nobody with eyes in their head would have called her beautiful when they met. Skinny limbs, bruised and dirty, an animal fear in her eyes. 

Not that he had been much better: Young John Rackham, sporting an uncertain mustache and wearing knee breeches he’d taken from the wealthy tea merchant he’d robbed the night before. The breeches flapped loosely around his calves and he’d been obliged to cinch them around his waist with a bit of rope, but they were a fetching shade of blue and had fine embroidery stitched around the cuffs. Jack had been reclined on a bench in a tavern with one knee hiked up, admiring the embroidery, running his hands over the neat little stitches winking gold in the candlelight, when something else caught his eye. 

A girl. His future. The entirety of his poor black heart, staring at him from across the public room of the Cock and Crown, her thin arm clutched in the paw of a man three times her age. 

Their eyes met for a heartbeat, two beats, and the man cuffed her, hitting a spot where a days-old bruise had already bloomed. She flinched, cowering back, one fist curled like she wished she could hit back but didn’t dare. Didn’t have the reach, or the height, or the muscle. Jack didn’t have much in the way of muscle himself, but he did have a knife in his boot and a dislike for bullies. 

After, they'd huddled together in an alleyway. She had flecks of blood all over her face and clothes, with a spray of it near the corner of her mouth. The girl hadn’t cried or begged or run away when Jack had slit her husband’s throat from ear to ear. She’d just smiled a little, staring intently at his knife. 

“You gonna fuck me?” she asked. Her voice was hoarse and low, like a boy’s. 

Jack considered the question. On the one hand, he hadn’t had a good fuck in weeks. On the other, he remembered her looking at that knife, and he didn’t think the young lady would be amenable to his considerable charms. Jack liked his cock attached right where it was, and there it would stay. However, if she _was_ amenable…

“Do you _want_ to fuck me?” he asked, smoothing his hair to one side.

“Fuck no,” she said, edging away from him. Her eyes got even colder and glassier, more remote. 

“‘In that case, we shall dispense with the fucking and get on with the introductions. I’m Jack,” he said, bowing as well as he could, given their current position. “I’m a pirate.” He had just barely graduated from swab to rigger, and hid inside a large coil of rope during his first battle, but she didn’t need to know that. Jack was a pirate with a good sense of self-preservation, which made him a rare breed, in his opinion.

Her lip curled. “‘You’re a boy.” 

“Well, all pirates start out as boys, don’t they? They don’t spring fully-formed, from the dregs of a rum bottle, hmm?” Jack stood, satisfied that the Watch hadn’t followed them. He had to make it back to the Dalmatia before Captain Davies gave orders to set sail, and he wasn’t about to bring trouble down on the heads of the Captain and crew.

“I don’t know what you talk like,” the girl said. She eyed him. He offered her his hand, which she slapped away, pulling herself up by gripping the uneven stones of the wall behind them. “I’m Anne. Anne Bonney.” 

“Is that his name?” Jack asked, jerking his head in the direction of the Cock and Crown and, presumably, her husband’s rapidly-cooling body. 

“Nah, it’s what I was born with.” She wrapped her arms around herself, looking far too young. Was she even old enough to be married? 

Jack knew he should leave her. He should. There were plenty of urchins about, she could make her way, same as the rest of them. She looked smart and mean, which meant a lot for a person’s survival. Still, he hesitated, feeling the pull of fate between them. A religious man might have said that God put her in his way, but Jack hadn’t had more than a passing acquaintance with the Lord since the hazy early days of his boyhood. Jack was a sailor and he believed in luck, fate, chance. The shift of the winds, catching a favorable current.

She was his tailwind. He knew that somehow.

“I’m going to have my own ship someday,” he blurted out. “Captain Jack Rackham, terror of the seven seas. They’ll all know my name.” He smoothed his hair again, and resisted the urge to tug at his clothes. 

She squinted up at him. “Is that right?” she asked. “Well then.” She lifted her chin, anger radiating from those startling blue-green eyes. “I’ll be your first mate, Captain.” 

He smiled and held his hand out again. “Not in those clothes, you’re not.” 

…………………………………………….

Jack watches her, the wind ruffling her hat, her hair pulling away from her face. She is beautiful and terrifying and smart and mean. She’s a cold-blooded killer with a face that could be in a painting or holding court at a ball back home. She is his heart, his world, his strange and fearsome Anne. 

“What are you smiling about?” she asks him, not turning around. 

“Imagining you at a ball,” he says promptly. “The ladies would die of envy and the gentlemen would lose control of their bowels whilst sporting enormous cockstands. It would be a sight to see.”

She shakes her head, turning her face toward the sun. “Piss off, Jack. You’re full of shit.” 

“Ah,”’ he says, slinging his arm around her shoulders. “But you love me.”

She grunts, rolling her eyes. But she leans in closer for a moment, the warm, strong press of her body next to his, and in that moment, Jack can't tell where he ends and she leaves off, their hearts beating together in perfect rhythm, one soul, bounding across the open sea.


End file.
